Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

Ancestry adds searchable death index 1916-2005

After enabling full searching of English and Welsh births and marriages up to 2005, Ancestry has now added deaths. This will be very useful, as deaths can be the hardest to find, if you have no idea when they took place.

Country wide civil registration of births, marriages and deaths commenced on 1 July 1837 in England and Wales. Registration took place at local civil registrars who in turn reported to the Registrar General at the General Register Office (GRO) in London. This national index to vital records is an essential source of genealogical information for family historians.

Since the original birth, marriage and death registers are not open to the public, getting access to the information on one of these certificates is done by first searching the national birth, marriage and death indexes that have been created by the GRO for this purpose.

The indexes for the three events are divided into volumes by year following which entries are listed alphabetically. Once an entry in one of the indexes is found, you are then able to use that information to order of copy of a death, marriage or birth certificate from the GRO. Information that can be obtained from the death index includes:

Full name of individual;

Month and year of registration;

Age at time of death;

Birth date;

Registration district (each county in England and Wales was divided up into registration districts. Jurisdictions are organised and appear as they existed at the time the record was created);

Inferred county (the county is inferred based on what counties the registration district covered);

Volume number;

Page number.

Note: The district listed is the district where the event was registered, not necessarily the location where the event actually occurred.